It was May of 1619 and the ancestor of the majority of the Tatum's in this country had arrived in Jamestown, Virginia.  He was among a very select group of people.  According to the records, 7,289 people migrated to Virginia between 1609 and 1624.  6,040 of those died of disease, starvation or succumbed to infections acquired onboard the ships in passage.   Until the 1660's only 20% of the arrivals in a given year survived. 

Although we don't know about Nathaniel Tatum, the majority of the immigrants were indentured servants.   They were free persons, but poor, who voluntarily contracted their services for a period of time in return for passage, food, and clothing with the promise of tools and seed at the end of the indenture.

On 16 February, 1623, Nathaniel was living at West and Shirley Hundred. On 23 January 1624 he was included in the muster of Shirley Hundred, Charles Cittie.  He reported that he was aged twenty years, and had come to Virginia on the "George" in May 1619, which would have made him 15 when he arrived in the New World.

Charles City was one of the four great corporations set up by the Virginia Company of London in 1618.  It retained its original area when it became one of the eight shires (counties) into which Virginia was divided in 1634.  Charles City County extended on both sides of the James River from James City County on the east, to Henrico County on the west.  Its eastern boundary was the Chickahominy River.

The pioneer settlements in Charles City County were actually plantation parishes, some of which were the earliest in Virginia history.  The first of these, Charles City, was established about 1612 as a place of "retreat against any forraigne enemy", on the south bank of both the Appomatox and James Rivers, several miles above its mouth. 

About the same period of time, the early plantation of West and Shirley Hundred, on the north side of the James River, about twenty-five miles above Jameston, was founded by Governor Thomas Dale as a part of his New Bermudas, centered about the parent settlement of Bermuda Hundred.  West and Shirley Hundred, of which Westover plantation was the nucleus, became Westover Parish.  The parish extended to Charles Cittie, south of the James;  by 1643, this part of the parish became Bristol Parish.

Nathaniel evidently had moved from the north side of the James to the south by 1624, and was living on the south side at Charles Citty.  Nathaniel later patented land on the south side of the Appomatox River.  Before May 1638, he had already established himself at the falls on the south side of the river. 

It is believed that Nathaniel returned to England and was married because on 25 July 1638 he patented 100 acres on the Appomatox, "south into the woods, north upon the river and east upon a creek parting the land from his own 500 acres, and west upon the river and the land of John Baker"  Nathaniel claimed right to this land for transporting his wife, Ann Tatum and daughter, Mary Tatum.  The 500 acres had been assigned to him the day before, by Thomas Causey, and lay next to the land of Causey.   A listing of the Tatum land records in Prince George and Charles City Counties are available on this site.

Nathaniel and Ann Tatum had at least three children:

1. Mary Tatum
2. Nathaniel Tatum II
3. Samuel Tatum

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